Before the Storm - Michael P. Kube-McDowell [10]
Ackbar nodded gravely. “I believe that we are keeping that promise, Senator Peramis. The defense of Bessimir was designed in accord with our existing threat profiles. Operation Hammerblow represents a likely scenario for the use of the Fifth Fleet.”
“What, to overwhelm an underdefended world?”
“Senator, I did not say—”
“This is exactly the point that concerns me. An army fights as it trains,” said Senator Peramis. “Did you build the Fifth Fleet to protect us against a strategic threat, or to strengthen Coruscant? Does the danger you saw lie outside our borders, or within them?” He turned and pointed an accusing finger in Leia’s direction. “Exactly who are you preparing to invade?”
Ackbar blinked, rendered wordless by surprise. The other officers in the room scowled and bristled. The other members of the Council were taken aback—by Peramis’s intimations themselves, or, like Senator Marook, by his temerity in speaking out of turn.
“I can only think that if you had been here when the votes were taken, Senator Peramis, you would not ask such questions,” Leia said sharply, moving to the front of the room with a purposeful stride and a swirl of robes. “You unfairly malign Admiral Ackbar’s honor.”
“I do not malign him in the slightest. I am sure Admiral Ackbar is faithful in his duties and loyal to his superiors,” Peramis said, looking purposefully at Leia.
“How dare you!” bellowed Senator Tolik Yar as he leaped to his feet. “If you do not withdraw your words, I will knock you down myself.”
Leia sent a small, tight smile in the direction of her champion but waved off his assistance. “Senator Peramis, the Fifth Fleet was built to protect the New Republic, and for no other reason. We have no territorial aspirations, no hunger for conquest. How could we, with ten new applications for membership arriving every day? On the honor of the House of Organa, I give my word—the Fifth Fleet will never be used to invade a member world, or to coerce its will, or subdue its legitimate ambitions.”
Even before he spoke, it was clear that Peramis was unimpressed. “What weight shall I give a vow made on the honor of an extinct family—a family you have no blood claim with?”
Tolik Yar’s face flushed, and his hand moved toward the ceremonial dagger he wore on his breastplate. But the hand of the officer standing beside him stayed the impulse. “Wait,” General Antilles said softly. “Give him a little more rope.”
Senator Peramis swept his gaze across the room and found that every face was turned toward him. “I am sorry to spoil the festive moment, and waste the expensive pyrotechnics thoughtfully arranged for us by Admiral Ackbar and General A’baht. I am sorry to raise Senator Yar’s blood pressure, and to offend Senator Marook’s well-honed sense of propriety. But I cannot be silent.
“What I’ve learned in the months since I took my Council oath, what I’ve heard and seen today, alarms me profoundly. If I could, I would speak of this in the well of the Senate, before the eyes of the entire Republic. You have not bought security—you have built the machinery of oppression, and are about to hand it over to the progeny of the most brutal oppressor in history’s memory.
“I am deeply, unalterably opposed to arming the New Republic against its own members—”
“You are mistaken—” Admiral Ackbar began.
“That is what you’ve done!” Senator Peramis said angrily. “The Fifth Fleet is a weapon of conquest and tyranny, nothing less and nothing more. And once a weapon is forged, it tantalizes, and tempts, and transfixes, until someone finds a reason to use it. You’ve given the son of Darth Vader a glittering temptation to follow his father’s path. You’ve given the daughter of Darth Vader a gift-wrapped invitation to secure her power by force of arms.
“And yet you sit here smiling and nodding and swallowing